Thursday, February 26, 2009

Recently a friend sent me a link to Jeffrey Angle's interview with the poet Mutsuo Takahashi in which Takahashi recounts his memories of an evening he spent with his friend Yukio Mishima about two months before Mishima attempted to incite a military coup in 1970, afterwards committing ritual suicide with a young man named Morita Masakazu on the grounds of the Japanese Defense Forces. I had never heard of Mutsuo Takahashi and was immediately intrigued.

In the interview, Takahashi speaks of meeting Mishima and his friend Morita for a few drinks and afterwards accompanying them to a sauna. He recalls details of their conversation which in retrospect foreshadowed what Mishima was planning to do. It's a fascinating interview to anyone interested in Mishima's life and his dramatic and violent death.

Mentioned in the interview was a volume of poems by Mutsuo Takahashi entitled Poems of a Penisist. Already intrigued enough by the interview, I made a note of the poet's name and the compelling title. The book proved to be somewhat hard to find. A few months later I was quite surpised when I found a copy listed for sale online by my local used bookstore.

The following day I headed for the used bookstore, wondering if the little old lady who runs the place, a retired librarian, was going to give me a funny look when I asked her about the book. On arriving at the bookstore, I managed to ask for the book without giggling and the little old lady smiled and located the book for me without batting an eyelash. I must pause here to pay tribute to our librarians, so often the unsung champions of free speech.

Upon returning home, I opened the book and, much to my delight, discovered some of the most beautiful homoerotic poetry I've ever read, more like Walt Whitman than Yukio Mishima in it's honest celebration of the male body. In Mutsuo Takahashi's poems sex between men is treated as a holy sacrament. His poems are sacred liturgies unfettered by any hint of self loathing or guilt. He has given us a pure and beautiful expression of his sexuality and his profound love. For this Mutsuo Takahashi deserves a place in the canon of homosexual saints.

Photo of Takahashi Mutsuo by Hosoe Eikoh, 1970.

From Poems of a Penisist

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murdererNo you are not, but really a wrestlerEither way it's just the sameFor from the ring of your entangled bodyClean as leather, lustful as a lilyWill nail me downOn your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendonsThe thoughtful forehead(In fact, it's thinking nothing)When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelidsInside, a dark forest awakensA forest of red parrotsSeven almonds and grape leavesAt the end of the forest a vineCovers the house where two boysLie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the otherIn the house, melancholy and terrible anxietyOutside the keyhole, a sunsetDyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter EscamilloScorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirstFalling, falling, a gymnastIf you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler

The God Statue I Love

Your body is made of lily and sexPiles of strong-smelling, night-illuminating liliesUpon them your pageboy has spread the ointment of nardFor the lower half of your body you wear a bullfighter's tight costumeThe elegant joints of your big fingers press on the brocaded arabesquesBeneath the costume, between the two overpowering thighsWrapped in highly fragrant cloudsSleeps a beautiful lion cub, I thinkThe gentle beast is made of particularly splendid liliesThe suspenders press into your dark chestThe night sky framed by the lions silky hairHooked to the chain of stars a medal shines like the moonOne arm, gathering the flow of muscles, like a riverLeisurely hangs towards the center of the earthThe hand grips a whipThe leather lash of the whip snake-coils on the groundYou will suddenly jerk it up and imprint a swift welt on the airFrom the wound brilliant blood will spurtI will put your standing figureOn the horse's fluffed buttocks, in the shining sky at dawnOn your shouldersI shall put the wrestler's head as thoughtful as a forest(I clipped it from the pictures in a sports magazine)